


Vexos Redemption AU  [HIATUS]

by LaggingUniverse



Category: Bakugan Battle Brawlers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Maxus Bakugan, Better Than Canon, Is the part where a suit walked into the writing room, It Gets Worse, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Other, Redemption, Season 2 Episode 11, That's really all this is going to be, about the Bakugan Anime, and believe me, and said 'good flippin luck', fun fact, slapped down a picture of Maxus Drago
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 23:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12095610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaggingUniverse/pseuds/LaggingUniverse
Summary: Perhaps, if there was no reason for convolution, things could have gone differently.An AU I made up while reading the New Vestroia episode list on Wikipedia. I’m going to try to explore some what-ifs that the show didn't have the courage or budget to try. Try not to take it too seriously.[8/12/2018 EDIT:] I really wish I had something to show for this fic, but everything I write falls apart. I might try to overhaul the whole thing, but I'm so pressed for time at this point in my life I might not ever get to it.





	Vexos Redemption AU  [HIATUS]

The light of the portal pulsed all around Spectra, pulling him farther and farther away from New Vestroia and closer and closer to his goal. He wasn’t running, or putting any effort into moving forward, but still the end of the tunnel grew closer. He knew it was the tunnel’s end, because all around him was light and at the end was darkness.

Perhaps it was poetic, like an inverse of the tunnel that he heard you walk down when you die. 

Spectra suddenly landed, and stumbled on the smooth concrete floor. He straightened up to catch his first few glimpses of earth as two pairs of boots--Gus and Lync’s, he knew--thudded to the ground on either side of him. 

He noticed Mira first. She and Baron were standing closest to the portal, looking around at the brick walls and ancient machinery. Some of it was hooked up to the now closing portal and whining with overuse, but more of it was dead and in pieces, left to scrap and rust.

The others--or rather the humans--were standing further away, talking excitedly with each other or examining a screen covered with error windows and red warning lights. There were more humans than before, and for the life of him Spectra couldn’t tell the humans who had been on New Vestroia already from the ones that had opened the portal to begin with. 

Spectra said nothing as the humans and the two wayward vestals slowly noticed just who had followed them. Dan simply yelled “VEXOS!” and pointed directly at Spectra while the other humans followed his gaze and went wide-eyed in shock. Mira and Baron were particularly unlucky, both turning white as sheets before they had the sense to jump off the platform and hide behind the humans like they were being chased.  

Dan stepped forward, like he was going to protect every single person in the room by himself. “Listen guys,” He began, with what Spectra amusedly guessed was supposed to be a threatening stance and tone. “This is MY home turf and YOU’RE not welcome!”

“Hear that? ‘Mighty’ Spectra?” Lync teased with a sarcastic shrug. “We’re not wanted here on earth.”

“YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!” Baron shouted to cover up the quiver in his voice and the shaking in his knees. He, at least, still feared Spectra’s power.

As he _should_. 

As they _all_ should.

“‘Not Welcome?’” Spectra repeated, stepping forward to square up to Dan. Spectra was rather pleased to find that he was the taller one, at least by a few centimeters. “How rude of you to say.”

Dan held his ground even as his friends all backed away. Spectra looked for any hint of fear in Dan’s eyes as the two pyrus brawlers stared each other down.

“You guys caused enough trouble on New Vestroia, and I won’t let you do the same here!” Dan showed nothing but determined aggression, fingers already twitching to his cards and gauntlet.

“Are you going to brawl me?” Spectra teased, bringing his face even closer to Dan’s to puncuate every successive question. “What will that accomplish? Is Drago going to open a portal to send me back to New Vestroia? Are you going to turn on that dinosaur of a machine again and push me through? I’m here on Earth with all of you,” Spectra straightened his back with a smug smirk. “and I don’t think I will be leaving anytime soon.”

There was an uncomfortable silence now. Even Lync’s smile wavered as he realized that he had followed Spectra into a situation that might be impossible to get out of.

“Then you’ll just stay here.” An unfamiliar voice stated bluntly. Spectra turned to look at the orange-haired human girl who was staring him down.

“You’re here on earth, and you can’t go back,” She continued, folding her arms with an expression of...defiance? Boredom? Spectra almost couldn’t tell. “So you’ll just stay here and leave New Vestroia alone. In the meantime, you can surrender to us so that we don’t let you freeze to death in the Russian wilderness.” She smiled, with almost cruel faux sympathy. “How does that sound, Vexos?”

“Alice’s right!” A human girl with twin pigtails piped up, rather ruining the effect of Alice’s threat. “If brawling won’t solve anything then you might as well just give up!”

“You _presumptuous children_.” Gus growled through his teeth, striding up to stand next to Spectra “How DARE you sugg--”

“Alright, Gus and I surrender.” Spectra interrupted.

Gus choked--actually choked--in surprise, turning to see if Spectra was joking.

The brawlers were no better. Dan’s expression switched from aggressive to hilariously bewildered, Baron tilted his head to the side like he was trying to make sense of an abstract art piece at a museum, and the girl named Alice who had made such a bold threat was staring at him with a thin layer of defiance to cover her unease.

“It is just as your friend said,” Spectra continued. “Gus and I are stranded here with nowhere to go, and no help from the royal family at all. In fact,” Spectra held up his gauntlet. “I’ll show you how hopeless our situation is. Gauntlet, send out a distress signal.”

[PROCESSING REQUEST] The robotic voice announced as the built-in holo-projector opened to a loading screen. The wheel spun around for nearly half a minute until it finally gave up and threw an error message back at him.

[CANNOT REACH VESPALACE. GAUNTLET MAY NEED REPAIRS.]

“I see it.” Mira suddenly said, looking at screen of her own gauntlet, which was too low grade to have a holoprojector but still should have had some form of rudimentary radio signal. “We’re on an uncolonized planet. Our technology is completely cut off from Vestal.”

“There you have it.” Spectra said, spreading his arms as though displaying his innocence for all to see. “We are here, we are staying, _and_ we are completely at your mercy. We won’t have to beg for our lives, will we?”

The brawlers were completely silent. They looked to their leaders, looking from Dan to Alice to Mira and then back again, wanting to voice their opinions but unsure of what would even be acceptable.

“I’m not surrendering.” Lync declared.

All eyes were on him now, though he didn’t seem to care. “I’m not giving myself up to the Resistance, of all people. Not after chasing these dweebs for half a year.”

“Really, now?” Spectra challenged, turning to him. “So what’re you going to do?”

Lync was staring at him with a mix of disdain and self-assurance. He retrieved a card from a shirt pocket, and loaded it into his gauntlet.

Spectra already knew what card it was going to be before it slid in, but absolutely none of the brawlers were expecting a neon-green lightsaber sword to project out the front of Lync’s gauntlet. “You might not have any Vexos pride, Spectra,” Lync pointed the sword down at the brawlers, then leveled it to Spectra’s face. “but I’m not going down without a fight.”

Spectra didn’t waste a second. “And now to prove to you, dear brawlers, that I mean you no harm,” Spectra surprised every single person in the room yet again when he loaded his own sword card into his gauntlet and advanced towards Lync with a wide, toothy grin. “I shall personally dispose of Lync for drawing a weapon on all of you.”

Perhaps if he hadn’t used the word ‘dispose’, the brawlers wouldn’t have been quite so scared for Lync’s life. But, as it happened, the room was filled with blood curdling shrieks as the two Vexos crossed swords.

Lync put up a good fight, using his height to his advantage to dodge Spectra’s first few slashes by staying close to the ground. But Spectra kept pushing the offensive, stabbing at Lync to make it harder for him to block. Lync knocked Spectra’s sword to the side and tried to dash out of the corner he’d been backed into. Spectra blocked him with the sword and tripped him with a leg sweep. Lync hit the floor hard and tried to roll away, but Spectra stomped on his cape to pin him down. Lync made one last swipe at Spectra’s leg before Spectra stabbed the sword into the exposed skin in Lync’s neck.

Lync screamed and convulsed from the electric shock, then went limp. The gauntlet read that that the sword hit its mark and the blade dissipated. Spectra stepped back, breathing hard, then looked up at the Brawlers in triumph.

The brawlers looked as though they had just witnessed a murder. They were grabbing each other’s arms and crying into shoulders, it seemed one of them had even thrown up onto the floor.

“Oh, I didn’t kill him.” Spectra calmly explained over the sounds of jagged sobs and screams of fear. “The sword is a taser, meant to knock whoever it hits unconscious. Don’t you brawlers have these settings...?”

They didn’t seem to get the message, so Spectra grabbed Lync by the armpits and hauled him up into the air for the brawlers to see. “Look! He’s just sleeping! He’s fine! Everything’s fine, please stop crying…!”

Gus grabbed Spectra’s arm to get his attention. “...Master?” Gus’s voice seemed strangely high-pitched. “This...are we really…?”

“Are we really what?” Spectra asked, arms shaking from holding up his surprisingly heavy unconscious former co-worker.

Gus swallowed, trying to form the words he needed. “Master...if I may be so bold...what about the plan we discussed?”

Spectra looked deep into Gus’s eyes as he lost his grip on Lync and accidentally dropped him on the floor.

“I’m winging it.”

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone cares to follow my train of thought, I’ll be using these notes at the end of every chapter to explain how this AU will differ from canon and why it matters on an episode-by-episode basis. 
> 
> This chapter was based off of Episode 11, Gate Crashers, as you probably already know. See, the point of this episode was to reveal that Spectra was on earth in order to try and get the brawlers to join the Vexos. However, the way he goes about it is so obtuse that it raises question after question. Like, why did Spectra take Runo as a hostage the moment he arrived on earth? Why was Spectra able to jump 20 straight into the air while carrying Runo, crashing through the glass observatory ceiling and risking serious injury to himself and others in the process? Why did he have to run through the bitingly cold Russian wilderness with a hostage? Was he trying to distract Lync so that he could extend his offer to the brawlers? Was he worried that it would be seen as an act of treason to ask the Resistance to join the Vexos? And why the heck did Alice and Dr. Micheal send Spectra and Gus and NOT LYNC back through the portal if it had enough power for ONLY one more transport if they really wanted to get the Vexos off earth and back on New Vestroia so bad!? 
> 
> I can’t claim I made the situation any less...violently convoluted...by making Spectra talk things out the moment he stepped out of the portal. However, I will make the claim that Spectra is acting with the intent of handling the situation with some amount of finesse. In the chapter, Spectra attempted to make himself as obviously nonthreatening to the brawlers as possible. He lays out his reasoning and actions plain and clear for the brawlers to consider rather than aggravatingly shrouding every last move he makes in unnecessary mystery. He tries to show an act of goodwill by disarming an immediate threat to the brawlers (Lync threatening everyone with a sword) rather than rectify a bad situation he created on his own (releasing Runo just after kidnapping her). On top of this, he’s surrendering himself to the brawlers on their own terms, rather than leading them on a wild goose chase into the woods and demanding that they bow to him. 
> 
> With all of this in mind, the brawlers are given a much more tangible mystery to unravel, and Spectra is now in a situation where he is not an immediate enemy. Now, if and when Spectra starts making demands, he’s a lot less likely to be turned down. If he asks the brawlers to come back to New Vestroia with him--as allies rather than enemies--would the brawlers buy it?


End file.
